Faster Than a Speeding Nanocraft

Imagine a nanocraft -- a tiny spaceship about the size of a quarter -- traveling 4.3 lights years (or roughly 25 trillion miles) to the outer reaches of the space we can barely conceive. A traveling technology changing the reach of humanity at ungodly speeds, even though it will still take the tiny traveling chip 30,000 years to get to its destination.

[Personally, I think that this idea is way too big of a reach. No corporate plan that I am aware of envisions keeping the planet alive long enough to care whether such a feat happens or not.]

But I bring up the issue (other than that it is an initiative introduced yesterday by Stephen Hawking, a Russian named Yuri Milner, and Markie Mark the Z, as in Zuckerberg, who seems to want to do everything now) for a different reason.

If this is a realistic effort, which it appears to be, why is it so hard for so many to consider the opportunity of using other grandiose technology innovations to launch a new ship of sorts for the making of a better, smarter gun culture right here on planet Earth? Making a journey to the outer limits involves very, very big dreams and very, very large numbers contained in a very, very small package. Gun changes are big issues too, but hardly large in comparison.  

I’ve argued before that, like it or want it or not, a dramatic change in the nature of the environment and mechanics of gun operations is well underway. The pros who we pay to love the hottest and coolest of killing toys for our defense are already creating military products that can guide their use and the trajectory of their firing in impressive ways, tantamount to sending a ship to inconceivable places.

And believe me, these gun changes are one BFD. Arguably, the most impressive entities for scientific and military innovation on Earth, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which, ironically, helped put the Sputnik mission into space, thus shooting down Russian dreams of universal dominance!) is in full awesomeness mode in regards to building better armaments. Their goal is to make it impossible for the ever evolving modern weapons to be out of control of a monitoring system, which is in many way a mission control of an impressive feat! 

And yet the guardians of the ways and mindsets of the past cannot see what is fast heading their way. They believe that there will NEVER be “smart” guns, meaning guns controlled by technological and digital capabilities. As they often say to me in quite derogatory ways, “How do you with your stupid thinking expect to deal with the 300 to 500 million guns already out there? I’ll never give up my old worn out varieties!”

To these real men -- and it almost always is men -- savoring out of date comforts makes them feel like they are in a comfortable orbit. Having the artsy, hip and cool gadgets that every generation born since the last century already goes to bed nightly loving, get little notice by them. In fact, the older guys want to deny that they are even attracted to what it means to have smart, controlled, and safe weapons -- even when wars and disputes in the future will likely be something we humans eventually leave on Earth.

I can see that the digitally “smart” and “anti-smart” forces are quickly getting ready for a battle of potentials. I know which I trust will win. Then again, when it comes to accepting the inevitability of dumb guns, I’m one who would rather shoot for a very, very distant target of change. It seems a more promising journey for us to use technology to achieve.